


Tell him he's dreaming

by vrepitsals



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23926600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vrepitsals/pseuds/vrepitsals
Summary: Sometimes Lance's husband wakes up in the middle of the night, declares himself dreaming and acts weird for a while before he falls back asleep.Sometimes Keith dreams that he's older and married to a boy he's never met.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 263





	Tell him he's dreaming

Sometimes Keith has strange dreams.

Or perhaps they're nightmares. Or very elaborate sleepwalking episodes.

Whatever they are, they couldn't exactly be classified as 'normal'.

Because sometimes Lance will be sleeping soundly, getting the beauty rest that he deserves, when Keith will suddenly jolt ramrod straight beside him and all but fling himself away.

The first such night he'd actually rounded back at Lance, all but falling out of their bed and raising his fists, his face pale and his expression spooked.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?"

"Woah, Keith… babe…" Lance had started, arms up placatingly. He'd learned the symptoms of PTSD back at the Garrison and it had almost been beyond luck that so far their team hadn't experienced any flashbacks. "It's okay, you're safe… Everyone is safe."

Lance had expected a long night. Talking Keith through the episode and consoling him afterwards. Possibly accompanying him to check in on the others, to let his senses reassure him as to reality.

But instead Keith had taken a long look around their bedroom, at the knick-knacks and posters and gifts from planets they'd saved. He'd looked back at Lance and then down at his own hands, at the simple gold band on his ring finger that he always forgot to take off before bed.

Then he'd flopped back down onto the mattress, hunched over his hands with a sigh.

"Oh," he'd said, a total anticlimax, "I'm dreaming."

"Well, so was I," Lance counters, slightly too tired and too relieved to think anything of Keith's strange use of tense, "come on. Lie down."

Keith had stared at Lance for a long moment as if he was some sort of revelation (which of course Lance is, thank you for noticing) before shrugging, stilted and awkward.

"Okay," he'd whispered, gingerly sliding under the covers and settling as far away from Lance as possible on the bed, "this is fine. Everything is fine."

"Goodnight Keith," Lance had said, in lieu of snuggling closer the way he normally would.

"Err, yeah. Night."

It hadn't taken Lance long to get back to sleep and in the morning Keith had seemed totally normal. He'd slid Lance's coffee over to him with a kiss and stolen bites of toast off Lance's plate rather than bothering to make his own.

The dreams had kept happening. Almost exactly weekly.

But Keith seemingly became used to them, barely bothering to move in Lance's arms after the initial jolt awake and a relieved, "oh, dreaming again."

At first he did nothing, simply resolutely shutting his eyes and thinking so hard Lance could almost hear the buzz of his brain.

But eventually he'd started to turn around in bed. Eventually he'd started staring at Lance, long and soft and a little sadly, barely returning Lance's smile.

"You're only a dream," he said once or twice.

"Hey, speak for yourself," Lance replied, amused even though he didn't quite know why.

"You're a nice dream though."

Well, at least Keith's senses hadn't abandoned him completely.

There's one otherwise non-descript night where Keith stares and stares and doesn't smile. Then he asks Lance for his name, he all but begs him for it.

Lance playfully dodges the question but Keith repeats it, growing more and more distraught.

"What's your name?" he insists, and Lance almost wants to answer just to spare him the pain. But something always stops him. Perhaps he just doesn't want to admit that Keith truly seems to forget on those nights.

Then, just abruptly Keith seems to give up on ever knowing, but instead seems content to thread his fingers through Lance's or tug Lance's arm around him and fall back asleep.

It's Lance's favorite of their routines so far, in part because it's the least worrying, in part because it lets him get back to sleep the fastest.

But it doesn't last because eventually Keith starts talking to him again.

"Lance…" he starts one night in the middle of winter, wrapped up together underneath a thick blanket.

"Oh so you do remember me?" Lance laughs slowly into Keith's shoulders and ignores the way Keith shivers.

"I… yeah. I remember you Lance. I never forgot you."

They've had this conversation before, back when they're been sorting everything out. But it's still never failed to lighten Lance's heart and Lance is pretty sure it never will.

"Yeah, and I remember the bonding moment. We're both great at remembering."

Keith had snorted. "Yep, definitely a dream."

"We both know I'm the boy of your dreams, Keith."

"Yeah, yeah."

"You want to know mine?"

Keith had frozen again then, something he hasn't done in a while.

"I'll give you a hint: he has terrible hair."

Keith had smiled sadly at Lance over his shoulder, but he hadn't replied. Instead, Lance had fallen asleep to Keith running his thumb over Lance's hand around his waist.

They'd grown into silence, and over the following months it had become like it was before. During the day Keith was affectionate, passionate, lance's teammate and partner in life. But sometimes he'd wake in the middle of the night, declare everything a dream, and become so unsure.

"Hey Lance?" He's whispered once.

"Yeah?"

Keith hadn't said anything for a long time, and when he did it was breathless and barely there.

"I like you… I think I might…"

Keith trailed off.

"Keith, I love you so much. You know that right?"

The hitch in Keith's voice suggested that he hadn't.

"Will you say it again?"

And Lance had. Then, and every other time dreaming Keith had asked.

* * *

Sometimes Keith has strange dreams.

They've been happening since he was about 11. About a month after his Dad hadn't come home from work, he'd woken up in a strange room, in the arms of a stranger.

His first reaction had been fight or fight: this stranger wasn't getting Keith and he wasn't getting Keith's house, or anything in it. The man was leaving empty handed or in a body bag. One way or the other.

But the stranger had blinked up at Keith slowly, lying in a bed with blue sheets rather than a couch. He was wearing pyjamas. When Keith looked down, he realised he looked different too. His hands were bigger and he was wearing a wedding band.

Oh.

Just a dream.

The man on the bed was grumpy, but Keith figured that the easiest way to get out of a dream was to fall back asleep.

He had missed the obvious, that first time.

But the dreams had kept coming, once every month or so and it sooner became harder and harder to ignore.

Keith was dreaming about waking up older and married to another boy.

And no matter how much he pretended otherwise, the thought didn't really bother him. In fact, the more he tried to think about the opposite, about a female voice against his shoulder and softer arms around him, the harder it was to convince himself that a future beside the dream man wasn't the type of future he wanted.

So he lay asleep at night, and every time he curled up in the man's arms he thought to himself so hard he could almost burst.

It's just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. 

But then, in the real world, Keith met Adam. In the real world Keith learned that Shiro, the only person who's opinion he actually cared about was just like him.

Shiro wasn't, as Keith feared, just like the rest of the Garrison.

And seeing Shiro and Adam together, seeing how much they obviously loved each other made Keith think that maybe he was allowed to want that too.

Not for right now. But for one day.

He reached a pleasant equilibrium for a while, content to most nights dream of nothing, but to sometimes wake up encased in warm arms.

It was a slow worry that crept in. Keith knew what he wanted, but what was destined for him? How could his future contain such simple happiness?

Keith was forced to conclude that it probably wasn't. It was a nice dream, but nothing more. The man didn't exist and he never would.

Then of course, the term changed and the dream man walked into Keith's class as a boy his own age, sporting shorter limbs and an even shorter temper but the same smile.

Keith doesn't know his name. He knows that he's a cargo pilot and that sometimes he will start dancing abruptly in the middle of the hall if he thinks there's something worth celebrating, but not his name. He never bothered learning the names of any of his classmates. But now he needs to know. He needs to know if there's any chance that this could one day be real, whether his future could hold something like this.

Perhaps, if Keith could learn this boy's name, he could be destined for something.

But the man in Keith's dream dodges all of his questions. It makes sense that, as a figment of Keith's imagination he wouldn't know anything that Keith doesn't. Keith seems to forget that in his dreams though. He lets himself hold onto his fool's hope.

That's his downfall, because the hope makes everything harder when it all falls apart.

When Shiro disappears, when Keith is booted from the Garrison, when he loses sight of the boy forever. When all he's left with is a shack in the desert, at least sometimes he still sees his dream man. At least sometimes he has warmth around him and slow steady breaths to keep him company.

Keith tries to linger in his dreams on these nights, tries to focus on the arms around him and fight off the sleep that threatens to overtake him.

But every morning Keith wakes up alone.

It's a nice dream. Far nicer than the life he has. But it doesn't mean anything. Keith isn't destined for anything.

But then, the universe decides to prove Keith wrong.

There's something out there in the desert. And then, months later, there's Shiro. There's the boy.

There's Lance.

He's almost exactly how Keith remembers and almost nothing like what Keith was expecting.

He doesn't laugh softly at Keith in the night. He isn't gentle. He doesn't look at Keith with stars in his eyes.

He laughs loud in the cold light of day. He's sometimes one step short of cruel. He looks past Keith to gaze at Allura.

Lance gives Keith whiplash. One day they're working together, the next Lance seemingly hates his guts. One day he holds Keith's hand and his smile is all but the man in Keith's dream's, the next he denies it ever happened and flirts with an alien they just met.

All the while Keith is struggling to admit to himself that despite it all he wants Lance. Not just the arms around him. Not just the warmth. He doesn't want the man if the man is going to be anyone else.

And so he spends his days getting whiplash and his nights getting reassurance. He spends his nights hearing his dream man, hearing Lance tell Keith that he loves him.

And so when Lance's shell cracks, when it starts to be abundantly clear that he also needs reassurance, Keith feels like it's his duty to pay it forward. To be soft smiles and warmth and arms around him when he needs them. To be reassuring words that he's stolen almost whole cloth from his dreams.

And as he does, Lance stops giving his whiplash. Instead his smiles grow soft in return and his teasing grows fond.

He's like the man in Keith's dreams but more - more than just the quiet moments in the middle of the night. He's the loud moments during battle and the happy moments celebrating with the team and the angry moments when they both boil over and the remorseful moments after.

Lance is more than Keith ever thought he could be destined for.

Keith doesn't dream of warmth or safe arms anymore. But when he wakes up he's not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't 100% know what this is. But I wrote and edited it in the course of a single evening, so I'm hoping it'll motivate me to work on the stuff I've had sitting in my wip box for more than a year.
> 
> Bonus scene that didn't really fit into the story but definitely happened:  
> (Over breakfast one morning)  
> Lance: Have you been sleeping better lately?  
> Keith: About the same. Why?  
> Lance: Your dreams have stopped. I thought it might have been helping.  
> Keith: My...dreams?  
> Lance: Yeah, you wake up in the middle of the night, declare you're dreaming and then act weird for a while before you fall back asleep.  
> Keith: *slowly turns to stare at Lance, mouth hanging open*  
> Lance: Near the end you were really insecure and kept asking me if I loved you. It was actually pretty cute  
> Keith: *continues staring*  
> Lance: Well I for one have been sleeping way better


End file.
